In college football, some things change, some don't

If change is progress, college football is progressing in the following fashion this year:

- Kickoffs have been moved back from the 35-yard line to the 30, guaranteeing many more runbacks than end-zone touchbacks and increasing the possibility for injuries on the most dangerous play in the game.

- Last year’s game speed-up rules have been junked in favor of new rules that get the ball in play quicker without the clock moving.

- What’s been called Division I-A since 1977 is now known in NCAA circles as the Football Bowl Subdivision, while Division I-AA is now titled the Football Championship Subdivision. There was no great cry to dump the familiar for the clumsy, which makes cynical reporters think the NCAA did this to tweak the originators of the Bowl Championship Series and confuse the public.

This much in college football stays the same:

- No matter what the name of the division in which big-time schools play, the usual suspects will be on top.

Southern California is the consensus No. 1 pick to start the season, on the theory that it will be there at the end, playing in the BCS title game in the Superdome a week after New Year’s Day. Michigan is highly touted as well, along with defending AP and BCS champion Florida, Oklahoma, Louisiana State and Wisconsin, plus West Virginia.

And most dark horses aren’t that dark: Alabama, with $4 million man Nick Saban in charge, should raise a ruckus in the Southeastern Conference. But then there’s Missouri, which could win the Big 12, or at least the North half. The Tigers haven’t finished first since 1969, thanks to the presence of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado.

But the national shift to 85 scholarships over a decade ago has brought opportunity to the underdogs ever since, accounting for the rise of Northwestern, Louisville, Virginia Tech and Oregon, to name a quartet of perennial also-rans that have run with the big dogs more than once since the Wildcats went to the Rose Bowl after the 1995 season.

Then there is Boise State, the ultimate Cinderella, which barged into the BCS party last season and bopped Oklahoma in a Fiesta Bowl with a finish that no Hollywood scriptwriter would have dared write.

Can that happen again? Can a Southern Mississippi, say, which is a likely candidate to win Conference USA, impress on such a grand scale that it rises in the computer rankings and the polls to break into the BCS neighborhood, at least for a night?

Maybe, though it’s unlikely the Statue of Liberty play and the star running back proposing to his cheerleader girlfriend will be part of the equation. That would be too much to ask. For everything else within the realm of possibility, stay tuned. Things are changing.

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